“I’m really flattered, if that helps.”
“I got distracted making out with a boy, and then locked up by a goblin,” Isabelle moaned. “You don’t understand! You don’t remember, but I was never like this before you. No boy ever meant anything to me. I had poise. I had purpose. I didn’t get dumb crushes, because I was never dumb. I was pure battle skill in a bustier. Nobody could shatter my sheer demon-hunting sangfroid. I was cool before I met you! And now I spend my time chasing after a guy with demon amnesia and losing my head in enemy territory! Now I’m a chump.”
Simon reached out for one of Isabelle’s hands, and after a moment Isabelle let him peel the hand off her face and link her fingers with his. “We can be two chumps in a cage together.”
“You’re definitely a chump,” Isabelle snapped. “Remember, you’re still a mundane.”
“How could I forget?”
“Did it never occur to you that I might be a faerie wearing a strong glamour, sent to deceive you?”
Do you remember the name of your heart?
“No,” said Simon. “I’m a chump, but I’m not that much of a chump. I don’t remember everything about our past, but I remember enough. I haven’t learned everything about you now that we have another chance, but I have learned enough. I know you when I see you, Isabelle.”
Isabelle looked at him for a long moment, and then smiled her lovely defiant smile.
“We’re two chumps going to a wedding,” she said. “I hope you noticed that I let him think I busted my way into this cage myself. Of course, I secured the key before I ever stepped into the cage.” She pulled the key out of the front of her dress and held it up, glittering in the light of Faerie. “I may be a chump, but I’m not an idiot.”
She leaped to her feet, her lace skirts swaying around her like a bell, and let them out of the cage. She picked up her weapons and stele from where they were lying in the dirt, and once her weapons were secured, she took Simon’s hand.
They were only a few steps into the faerie forest when a shadow swooped down and upon them. Isabelle went for her knives, but it was only Mark.
“You have not escaped yet?” Mark demanded, looking harried. “And you stopped to acquire a paramour?”
Isabelle stopped dead. She, unlike Simon, recognized him right away. “Mark Blackthorn?” she asked.
“Isabelle Lightwood,” Mark noted, mimicking her tone of voice.
“We met earlier,” said Simon. “He helped me get that key.”
“Oh now,” said Mark, tilting his head in a birdlike movement. “It was no uneven bargain. You gave me some very interesting information about the Shadowhunters, and the great loyalty they have shown one of their own.”
Isabelle’s back straightened as it did at any challenge, black hair flying like a flag as she took a step toward him. “You have been done a terrible wrong,” she said. “I know you are a true Shadowhunter.”
Mark took a step back. “Do you?” he asked softly.
“For what it’s worth, I disagree with the Clave’s decision.”
“That’s the Clave, isn’t it? I mean, I like Jia Penhallow okay, and it’s not that I . . . dislike your dad,” Simon, who did not actually like Robert Lightwood, said awkwardly. “But the Clave, basically assholes, am I right? We all know that.”
Isabelle held her hand out, palm down, and rocked it back and forth in a gesture that said You’ve got a point but I refuse to agree with it out loud.
Mark laughed. “Yeah,” he said, and he sounded a little more sane, a little more human, as if the laugh had grounded him somehow. There was an accent to his words that made Simon think not faerie but: L.A. boy. “Basically assholes.”
There was a rustle in the trees, a rising of the wind. Simon thought he could hear laughter and calling voices, hoofbeats upon the cloud and the currents of the air, the baying of hounds. The sounds of a hunt, the Hunt, the most remorseless hunt in this or any world. Faint, but not far enough away, and coming closer.
“Come with us,” said Isabelle suddenly. “Whatever price there is to be paid, I will pay it.”
Mark gave her a look that was equal parts admiring and disdainful. He shook his fair head, leaves quivering and light lancing through the bright locks.
“What do you think would happen if I did? I would go home . . . home . . . and the Wild Hunt would follow me there. Do you imagine I have not dreamed of running home a thousand times? Every time, I see gentle Julian pierced with the spears of the Wild Hunt. I see little Dru and baby Tavvy ridden down. I see my Ty, ripped apart by their hounds. I cannot go until there is some way to go to them without bringing destruction down on them. I will not go. You go, and go fast.”
Simon pulled Isabelle backward, toward the trees. She resisted, her eyes still on Mark, but she let him draw her away into concealing leaves as more faerie horses hurtled down, lightning amid the trees, shadows against the sun.
“What trouble are you causing now, Shadowhunter?” asked a faerie on a roan horse, laughing as the steed whirled. “What is this word of more of your kind?”
“No word,” said Mark.
There were more horses joining the roan, more and more of the Wild Hunt. Simon saw Kieran, a white silent presence. The faerie on the roan turned his horse toward the place where Simon and Isabelle stood, and Simon saw the roan sniff the air like a dog.
The rider pointed. “Why do I spy Shadowhunters, then, in our land and answerable to us? Should I ask them what they are about?”
He rode forward, but he did not make it far. He was wearing a cloak embroidered with silver, showing the constellations, the silver enchanted to move as though time were sped up and planets spun fast enough for the eye to see. His horse stopped short, its rider almost falling, when his beautiful silvery cloak was suddenly pinned to a tree by a well-placed arrow.
Mark lowered his bow. “I see nothing,” he said, pronouncing the lie with a certain satisfaction. “And nothing should go—now.”
“Oh, boy, you will pay for this,” hissed the rider on the roan.
The horses and the riders shrieked like pterodactyls, circling him, but Mark Blackthorn of the Los Angeles Institute stood his ground.
“Run!” he shouted. “Get home safe! Tell the Clave that I have saved more Shadowhunter lives, that I will be a Shadowhunter and be damned to them, that I will be a faerie and curse them! And tell my family that I love them, I love them, and I will never forget. One day I will go home.”
Simon and Isabelle ran.
George threw himself on Simon the instant he and Isabelle appeared in the grounds of the Academy, his arms strangling-tight. Beatriz and, to Simon’s amazement, even Julie flew at him only a second behind George, and both of them mercilessly pummeled his arms.
“Ow,” said Simon.
“We’re so glad you’re alive!” said Beatriz, punching him again.
“Why must you hurt me with your love?” asked Simon. “Ow.”